🎧 MTE Podcast #6: Let’s Talk About Suicide

October the 10th is World Mental Health Day. This year’s theme is suicide prevention. Every 40 seconds, someone in the world dies by suicide. This has to change.

Mental health stigma is reducing. But it’s still incredibly tough to talk openly about suicidal tendencies. We may feel shame. We may feel burdensome. We may want to avoid worrying or upsetting those we love.

If you’ve been affected by the contents of this episode, or if you are currently experiencing suicidal thoughts or extremely low mood please visit Samaritans.org or call +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90. Those in Berlin can contact: International Helpline Berlin: 030-44 01 06 07. Worldwide visit: https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/.

2 thoughts on “🎧 MTE Podcast #6: Let’s Talk About Suicide”

Tore Nielsensays:

First of all, thank you for talking about being suicidal. It helps.

People got to be ready to listen as well. I often feel that people only want to hear about suicidality if there’s a message of hope attached. And that is often the thing that’s thin on the ground. It may be hard to listen to experiences of ideation and despair, but it is worse to live through it. It cannot be on the sufferers to keep from upsetting their audience.

I find that we do ourselves and our audience a disservice if we ‘keep it light’. It is another version of not wanting to upset people.

Thank you for listening. Your comment made me reflect deeply on this notion; I appreciate you highlighting it. And you’re completely right, there’s a risk of sanitising the experience, just to make it digestible.

From my perspective, I keep it light for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m fortunate at this stage of my journey to be able to do so. It certainly wasn’t the case years ago. Secondly, I see the gradual reduction of stigma as an incremental, step-by-step process. The lightness for me creates a doorway for deeper discussion.

Ideally, we’d be able to discuss all aspects of suicidality. And we must not ignore the shadow, the darker elements of what already is a challenging topic…

My challenge as an advocate is to find the balance between speaking hard truths, which run the risk of upsetting people, and maintaining compassion for both those who experience suicidal tendencies and those who require education.